From Alessandra Facchinetti, a Step Forward for Tod’s

MILAN — The Tod’s show is fast becoming a “Céline moment” in Milan — and that is a big compliment to the designer Alessandra Facchinetti.

Great fashion minds think alike, and the Italian designer works in the same spirit as Céline’s Phoebe Philo in Paris, creating a streamlined, modern, women-friendly wardrobe.

Maybe because Tod’s is a leather goods house, Ms. Facchinetti, only in her second season at the brand, has been automatically guided in the right direction. Her big, bold coat shapes, worked in patent leather with a sheen so bright it seemed like lacquer, started the show. It hit just the right note of sculpture and surface interest.

Bags and shoes to match brought the same hard, modern effect, but fluffy mink on the inside of the neck radiated softness and sweetness. So did colors like pale blue and lilac, making this a show by a woman for women, in the best sense of the idea.

The designer found other ways to soften her silhouettes: mushroom-shaped felt hats or hemlines rising and dipping as if twirled by a compass. There also were bold colors, like regal purple and splotchy patterns, perhaps abstract flowers, on a coat that the designer said was cut in “enveloping volumes.”

Even the way the clothes were worn — open, easy and with most of the models walking in flat but feminine shoes — caught a 21st-century spirit that never looked space age or wacky.

With Ms. Facchinetti at the helm, Tod’s seems to have found a winner for its big venture into clothing.

Veronica Etro went back to the family’s roots — with great success.

Sometimes she can seem drowned by the heritage of paisley patterns. And while a digital kaleidoscope of color and pattern dominated the Etro backdrop, this season the designer kept things rich — but firmly under control.

Starting with Rudolf Nureyev, some of whose costumes are in the house’s archives, she traced a silk road across what she described as “legendary landscapes.”

The deep ginger and orange hues of paisley still may have been dominant, but they were challenged by fabrics that were all about texture: hairy loden used for a coat, tweedy tartan, plush velvet and the luster of gilded Lurex.

Slice fine pleating into that material mix and there was a new geometric sharpness, combined with the lush exoticism, at the brand.

While her brother Kean emphasized the company’s exceptional hand workers with his men’s collection in January, Ms. Etro took a different path to show art and craft. It was one of her finest collections.

Giorgio Armani went back to his androgynous roots — ragazzi, or the Italian equivalent of a generic “guys,” with chopped hair, mannish felt hats and masculine pantsuits — for his Emporio Armani collection.

And the result was a word not often associated with this designer: cute.

The black and white palette, even with a splash of bright turquoise, suggested Armani images of the 1980s when women were just beginning, sartorially and otherwise, to take on a masculine sense.

But this collection was done with humor, as shiny circlets suggesting neckties competed for attention with baggy culottes. The show was neatly balanced between the masculine pants and curvy feminine dresses in velvet — yet both of them clearly aimed at the same woman in different moods.